


wherever you find love

by littleleotas



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 06:39:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13141164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleleotas/pseuds/littleleotas
Summary: Shepard gives Garrus a lesson in human holiday traditions.





	wherever you find love

**Author's Note:**

> I used to love Christmas. I used to be that girl putting up her tree 1 November. I am not anymore, but I think my girl Leia Shepard may have inherited it from me. I must admit, writing about a character who loves Christmas as much as she does may have made my grinchy heart grow a little. I hope she brings a smile to your face as well. Happy holidays <3

The sliding doors opened, and what appeared to be a walking pile of boxes and bags nearly fell through the doorway. Garrus looked up from his datapad to see Shepard grinning as she dropped everything on the floor unceremoniously. She lifted her hands exuberantly over her head and said cheerily, “Christmas!”

“…uh-huh,” Garrus agreed, slowly.

She hummed a laugh, stepping over the boxes and bracing her fingers on Garrus’s shoulder as she stood on her toes to kiss his cheek. “I got decorations.”

“Okay…”

Garrus looked at the pile of bags, frowning as he scanned them intently. Shepard seemed not to notice, grabbing one bag off the floor and taking it to the kitchen. He leaned down, raising the edge of a bag with his finger. Inside were plastic boxes filled with small colourful balls in green, blue, purple, and pink. “I’m almost afraid to ask,” he said, mostly to himself.

“You’ve worked with humans long enough, have you really never heard of Christmas?” she asked as she re-entered the room.

“I’ve heard of it. Remember when you and Joker drank some of that…egg…thing…and went singing Christmas songs all over the ship?”

“…I do not.”

Garrus chuckled. “That didn’t come with all this, though.” He gestured to the pile of boxes and bags still littering the entryway floor.

Shepard shrugged, leaning over and rummaging through the boxes. “Wouldn’t fit in my footlocker,” she said. “Ah!” She stood up holding a large box with a photo of a large, full pine tree covered in sparkling lights and coloured baubles on it.

“Is there a tree in that box?” he asked sceptically.

“Mmhm!” she answered brightly, running a nail back and forth over the tape at one end.

“I-“ Garrus began, but quickly abandoned the thought.

“What?” she looked up, pausing in her attempt to open the box.

“I think it’s best if I just wait and see.”

She returned to the box, slicing through the tape and pulling out segments of artificial green tree limbs: metal limbs with spiky needle leaves.

Garrus hummed thoughtfully. Shepard looked up at him, raising an eyebrow.

“I should have guessed it wasn’t a real tree,” he said.

Shepard laughed, carrying the pieces to an empty spot of the floor by the piano and sitting down cross-legged. “How did you expect a real tree to fit in that box?”

He sighed, sitting down across the pile of artificial foliage from her. “I’ve learned not to question things with you.”

“Wise,” she said, emptying the tree base out of the box. She flashed him a grin, which he returned with an affectionate flick of his mandibles. She clicked the legs of the base into place and set the base upright on the floor with a flourish. “Okay,” she said, turning to the rest of the pile and placing her hands on her thighs, elbows pointing outward. “I need the one marked A.”

She began searching through the tree limbs, and Garrus followed suit. She found the piece first, and placed it into the base, pulling the limbs down and rearranging the poseable limbs. Her tongue poked out of her mouth in concentration, and Garrus chuckled fondly.

“What? It makes it look like a real tree,” she said indignantly.

“Why not just get a real tree?”

“Pine trees aren’t exactly endemic to the Citadel,” she said as she moved her way around the tree.

“Surely people have them shipped over from Earth?” he asked, gingerly mimicking her actions on the tree.

She shrugged. “Seems like a lot of hassle. Besides, we have this one now, so we don’t have to worry about getting a tree any other year. You won’t break it, you know,” she said, nodding toward his hands as they slowly and gently moved a branch a few centimetres to the right.

He looked at her doubtfully and she stuck her tongue out in response. She leaned back, sorting through the pile and picking up the next segment of the tree. She screwed it in above the first segment and resumed separating the branches.

“So,” Garrus said as they worked. “Have you always been this enthusiastic about Christmas?”

She nodded. “Didn’t always get one, with my parents being on duty most of the time. Had to channel all my enthusiasm into the few Christmases we did get.”

Garrus pulled a branch to the side and it snapped off. He looked at it for a moment, stunned, and looked sheepishly up at Shepard. She looked confused at his eye contact, but then her eye caught the broken branch. She clapped a hand over her mouth, stifling a laugh, then cleared her throat, affecting a dignified nonchalance. “It gives the tree character,” she said loftily.

“Uh-huh,” said Garrus, tossing the broken branch to the side.

With the tree completed, Shepard stood up and walked around it, filling in the gaps.

“And now we decorate it?” Garrus asked.

“Not just yet,” she said, turning and heading to the kitchen. Garrus followed curiously, leaning on the bar dividing the kitchen from the living room as Shepard opened a cabinet. She set two pans on the stovetop, and walked to another cabinet, pulling out two wine bottles, one with a blue label and one with a red. She poured the red bottle into one pot, turning on the burner, and then did the same with the blue bottle.

“Not eggnog?”

“I learn from my mistakes, Garrus,” she replied gravely. “This is mulled wine. They had a dextro version, too. I bet it’s garbage but,” she punctuated her sentence with a shrug as she stirred the wine, “Only one way to find out.”

“Thanks,” said Garrus sarcastically.

She smiled brightly before turning toward the music system controls. After pushing a few buttons, the sound of a piano heavily plinking out the notes rang out over the sound system. A voice began to sing, with Shepard’s accompaniment: “Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus lane!”

Shepard replicated the singer’s odd vocal cadence, and Garrus chuckled. She smirked at him, raising an eyebrow. “Elvis’s version of this is the only one that matters,” she said matter-of-factly. She ladled the dextro mulled wine into a glass and handed it to Garrus.

“I believe you,” he said. He sniffed the wine warily.

She poured herself a glass of the levo wine, then turned the burners off and left the kitchen. Garrus followed behind. She stopped in the entryway and picked up a bag with one hand. “ _Now_ we can decorate,” she said, making her way over to the tree. She set her glass on the table while she settled herself on the floor.

Garrus took a sip of his wine, grimacing, before sitting down in the same spot as before.

“No good?” she asked.

Garrus’s brow furrowed. “You know, it’s not actually the worst thing I’ve ever had.”

Shepard raised her hands over her head exuberantly. “It’s a Christmas miracle!” She tossed a box to Garrus, who caught it, looking at it before opening it. It was full of blue and green balls with small golden thread tied in a loop on one end.

Shepard was dancing – or ‘dancing,’ as was often the case with her: moving her shoulders up and down with the song’s rhythm as she walked in circles around the tree, draping a string of lights on it as she went. She then turned her attention to a box of pink and purple ornaments, opening it and sliding out the plastic tray. She picked up a pink one and hung it on the end of a branch, pulling the branch slightly upward before leaning down to pick up another ornament.

Garrus got to his feet holding a blue ornament, and placed it on a branch. Shepard paused to take a sip of her wine, watching Garrus continue to decorate the tree.

“Try not to clump them,” she said.

“Clump?”

“Don’t put too many of the same colour in the same place.”

“Ah.” He moved the last blue one he’d placed next to another blue one and moved behind the tree, finding an empty branch on which to replace it. They continued decorating the tree, with Shepard singing along with every song.

“So…” Garrus ventured. “What exactly is the…purpose of this?”

“Of Christmas?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I meant the tree, but sure.”

As if on cue, the next song began playing, a melancholy single violin followed by an echoing Scottish voice. The look in Shepard’s eyes became distant as she placed an ornament near the top of the tree.

“For me, it’s…a celebration of peace. Christmas only happened when we were all at home together, no one was out on duty. We could just…be. Put pretty shiny things and lights up all over our home and snuggle together on the couch watching old films.”

She looked down, picking up another ornament and searching the tree for a place to put it. “It’s been so long since there _was_ peace. And there is now. And I’m home, and I have you.”

She looked up at Garrus and he saw tears filling her eyes. He pulled her close to him, hugging her tightly. She returned the tight embrace.

The song changed again, this time a chorus of muted trumpets with a booming, laughing voice ringing out over them. The booming voice began to sing: “It’s in the singing of a street corner choir, it’s going home and getting warm by the fire…”

Shepard pulled back from Garrus, looking up at him with a teary smile. She sang along with the next line: “It’s true, wherever you find love, it feels like Christmas.”

He smiled, leaning down to kiss her forehead. “Makes sense to me,” he murmured, as she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr at avelakjar if you want to come say hi!


End file.
